Stick Your Cash Where The Sun Does Shine

Sep 7 2008 Gordon Waddell

I Wouldn't Take Abu Dhabi Dough

IF they put down a fiver we'll put down a tenner. One of the most famous lines in Scottish football.

But it's now redundant. Because if it's not £50million and £100million these days then you're just not a player in the game.

Ask yourself this, though - if one of these billionaires came calling for your club this week and promised you the earth would you throw open the doors?

The Old Firm? Small potatoes. Europe?

We'll blow the Milans and Madrids out of the water. Transfer kitty? Huge. Wages? Beyond your wildest dreams.

Would you actually buy into it with no questions asked?

Let an investor bring a computer game to life for his own amusement with the team you've invested your lot into?

Not me. Not in a billion years. Take a look around you this week. Alan Curbishley out the door at West Ham because he didn't get to run his team. Players being bought and sold without his say-so.

Kevin Keegan spending days on the precipice at Newcastle United for the same reason.

Mark Hughes. Loses the billionaire owner who employed him at Manchester City, lands another one who immediately buys him the most expensive toy in history. Whether he wants it or not.

And then tells him - whether he likes it or not - he'll be a getting a few more of them as soon as the transfer window opens again. That's not football. It's rich guys having a peeing up the wall contest - with fire hoses between their legs.

And when they get bored? When they lose interest? What then? What do they leave behind when they head back to sunnier climes?

My pops went to his first Falkirk game in the 1930s. Seventy years on he still has a season ticket and the club, despite its ups and downs, is still there.

The way it should be. The way football should be.

Something for your community. Something to hang your hat on forever.

It's part of the beauty of the game, of being a fan, the feeling that you've had to climb mountains to get any success.

That a season of joy in amongst 20 of pain and futility can make the whole thing worthwhile.

The guys who are buying into clubs now will never understand that. The feeling that respect and success should be earned, not bought.

All that matters to them is how the rest of the world perceives their wealth and how much control they exercise. It doesn't matter that some of them know hee-haw about the game.

Bottom line is they have to be seen to be making the big decisions AND getting the credit for them.

So when Manchester City sign Robinho for £32.5m and give him £160,000 a week, the Abu Dhabi royal family don't care how he fits into whatever plan Hughes has for his team. They probably don't even care the player himself thinks he has signed for Chelsea.

All they care about is they were seen to blow everyone away.

Robinho might be a football player but to them he's the longest yacht in the world, the most luxurious private jet, the biggest diamond ring on the best-looking trophy wife. Just another plaything.

Whatever happened to just letting your manager manage? Trusting him to know better than you?

Look at the problems Rafa Benitez had with his guys at Liverpool. Look at the undercurrent of expectation at Chelsea. Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson has nailed his colours to the mast at West Ham and Vladimir Romanov has never hidden his need to have his hands on the Hearts tiller.

David Murray has done it - trying to foist Colin Hendry on Dick Advocaat at Rangers all those years ago.

We all thought Mike Ashley was going to be something different at the Toon, a supposedly dyed-in-the-wool Geordie, Mr Everyman. Mr Why-Aye-Man, in fact.

He's just like all the others, though. Ashley may go to the bother of trying to look like he's a fan, he may stand among them and drink pints in a oner.

But he clearly doesn't understand one iota about what the guys surrounding him are feeling for their club if he's circumnavigating Keegan and putting his faith in cocky cockney Dennis Wise.

Doing it the other way, though? He's worried it makes HIM look weak, like he's not the man with the power.

Some people might think that's fine, that the end will justify the means and to hell with how you get there.

Me? I'd rather do it the hard way and feel good about it.